a technology interest group for the library professionals in Maricopa County, AZ

Talking Tech Friday- Retaggr

This week’s subject was stolen shamelessly from the Librarian in Black, from whom I get an insane number of Talking Tech Friday ideas. So, on to Retaggr!

What is it?

Retaggr is best described as a Web 2.0 business card. It allows you to create a profile widget that displays your entire social web presences in one simple, professional looking layout.

How does it work?

Registration requires your name, email, password, and a display name. Like many web services, Retaggr then sends a confirmation email to your address to ensure you’re a real person. While you wait for that to show up, however, you can continue setting up your profile.

To start, you can enter in information about yourself such as a brief introduction, where you’re located, where you work, your blog or website (including an RSS feed to display recent posts), and you can enable twitter to display a status message, if you so desire.

Next, you can upload a profile photo – which makes me think that I should design something for Tech Talk that isn’t a long banner! Any artists volunteer for this?

You can choose to display contact information, such as your email address and/or phone number. Finally, what you’ve all been waiting for, you can choose to add your profiles from just about any social networking site you might have, including social networking, video, music, blogging, life streaming, books, shopping, gaming, and a catch-all “other” category. If you don’t find your site there, you can add it.

After all that, you can create a variety of widgets for your card.

Here’s the card I made for MCLC Tech Talk (can’t embed because of WordPress, but go take a look!).

However, now I’ll make one for me, so I can truly display the awesomeness that is possible in consolidating the multitude of online presences I have.

There are several other features, such as bookmarking other cards, or creating an email signature widget. Additionally, if you run your own website, you can add Retaggr to your code so that your readers’ cards will display when commenting or other features.

Possible Library Uses

I think that Retaggr has some great potential for creating a business-like cards for both individual librarians and well-connected libraries. I can envision a nice profile picture of a library building, having the library’s address, phone number, and website on the main card, and then listing the library blog, library Thing, Facebook group, Flickr page, etc below. Could be a lot of fun!